our archers, and flung himself on
her bed imploring protection, followed by a captain of the guard from
whom she gained his life. She entreated the captain to lead her to her
sister's room, and as she fled thither, more dead than alive, another
fugitive was hewn down by a hallebardier only three paces from her;
she fell fainting in the captain's arms. Meanwhile Charles, the
queen-mother, and Anjou, after the violent scene in the king's
chamber, had lain down for two hours' rest and then went to a window
which overlooked the _basse-cour_ of the Louvre, to see the "beginning
of the executions." If we may believe Henry's story, they had not been
there long before the sound of a pistol shot filled them with dread
and remorse, and a messenger was sent to bid Guise spare the admiral
and stay the whole undertaking; but the nobleman who had been sent
returned saying that Guise had told him it was too late: the admiral
was dead, and the executions had begun all over the city. A dozen
Protestant nobles of the suites of Conde and Navarre, who at the
king's invitation had taken up their quarters in the Louvre, were
seized; one was even dragged from a sick-bed: all were taken to the
courtyard and hewn in pieces by the Swiss guards under the eyes of
Charles, who cried: "Let none escape." Meantime the Catholic leaders
had been scouring the streets on horseback, shouting to the people
that a Huguenot conspiracy to murder the king had been discovered, and
that it was the king's wish that all the Huguenots should be
destroyed.

A list of the Huguenots in Paris had been prepared and all their
houses marked. None was spared. Old and young, women and children,
were pitilessly butchered. All that awful Sunday the orgy of slaughter
and pillage went on; every gate of the city had been closed and the
keys brought to the king. Night fell and the carnage was not stayed.
Two days yet and two nights the city was a prey to the ministers of
death, and some Catholics, denounced by personal enemies, were
involved in the massacre. The resplendent August sun, the fair sky and
serene atmosphere were held to be a divine augury, and a white thorn
in the cemetery of the Innocents blooming out of season was hailed as
a miracle and a visible token from God that the Catholic religion was
to blossom again by the destruction of the Huguenots. The murders did
not wholly cease until September. Various were the estimates of the
slain--20,000, 5,000, 2,000. A goldsm